Dr. Marek Minarik founded Genomac, now the largest private genetic testing service in the Czech republic (see sidebar article).  Dr Minarik earned his Ph.D. at the Barnett Institute from 1995 to 2000, under Prof. Barry Karger.  He brought expertise in in CE of small ions from the Institute of Analytical Chemistry in Vienna and Charles University in Prague worked on DNA desalting of samples prior to sequencing..  He then worked with Odilo Mueller on the single capillary fraction collector, and completed his thesis work on a multiple capillary collector which was part of the core technology spun out to Peoples’ Genetics.  Marek also developed isoelectric focusing protocols for proteins in large-bore capillaries, using the collector to spot them onto membranes for MALDI analysis.

Marek was always aggressively curious about technologies, a natural innovator from the start.  Having explored the available software, he was called upon to make a lot of slides for Dr. Karger, and instigated the transition to live Powerpoint presentations. He marveled the group with one movie in particular:  The 8-column capillary collector called for 1536-well plates made out of agar, which could be easily cast once a mold was made, but the odious  task of drilling 1536 tiny holes individually and precisely fell upon him.  The video showed the translation stage for the collector, mounted under the drill press, after he hacked its control program to make it do the work!

Dr. Minarik spoke with Roger Kautz about his experiences at the Barnett Institute and the path to making a successful company.  

RK: How did you come to start a company?  In a nutshell, what were the steps between getting your Ph.D. at the Barnett and starting Genomac?

MM:  "I went to work for Amersham Pharmacia, in California.  The environment in the Silicon Valley was very inspiring; it seemed that good ideas were enough to start in biotechnology.  I saw how to base a company on patents and new technologies, which were straightforward to acquire, and saw opportunities in investigative techniques.  When the atmosphere changed in Silicon Valley after Sept. 11, 2001, I got the idea to establish a company in Prague and talked about it to my sister Lucie.

"We started by running mutation detection.  I was able to separate mutants using the CE heteroduplex separation, and our methods were very sensitive, we could find k-ras mutations in tissue samples that were composed of as little as 5% cancer cells, even down to 1% for genes with good clear patterns.  And this is without any pre-selection.  We got the first grant to look at somatic mutations, like p53.  Say you’re looking for signs of pancreatic cancer.  Look for a certain profile, k-ras mutations, and this turned out to be useful.  We earned a grant from the Czech Ministry of Health, which funded the lab, let us pay some people, at least part-time.

"Currently, our tests are not clinical assays to detect the disease.  This is what we were thinking 5 years ago, but not now: there are many tremendous imaging methods, like CT scans, for detecting tumors.  We have gone into predictive oncology, which is similar to pharmacogenomics except rather than the patient’s genome you are profiling the tumor’s to predict its therapy response.  For example, certain lung cancers have a mutation in EGFR and only if you have this mutation you will respond to the therapy

"Our methods have been great at finding these low-level somatic mutations.  We got a really big grant last year for lung cancer -- predicting the outcome of therapy.  The same methods can be applied to pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer.  We are expecting the decision for another grant on pancreatic cancer.  So now we are moving from “diagnostic genomics” into “oncology genomics”, which is where we want to be.   It is difficult to compete with the geneticists: there are hundreds of well-established and routinely used tests, like trisomy 21 for detecting Down’s syndrome.   The oncology applications are relatively new,  oncologists have many new choices of therapy and they have a strong need to determine which to start with.  This is what we do best right now.

RK: Best in the Czech republic or best in the world?

MM: (Laughs) " I would say best in Czech republic, maybe best in Eastern Europe."

RK: In order to be a company President, what things did you need to learn that you didn’t learn here at the Barnett?

MM: " One thing I had to learn was how to handle teams, how to build a company structure where people work for me that lead the groups, and the groups in turn direct the students.  I should have learned this at the Barnett but I really truly learned this working for a company.  Dr. Karger has a management style where everyone reports directly to him.  It works for his group in the university, but to build a company that can grow further I have made a hierarchy.

RK: What is the most significant thing you gained from your years at the Barnett Institute? 

MM:  "The really big thing I got from the Institute?  There are two things."

"The first is that you really have to know the bigger picture.  We were developing tools -- an instrument, a method, or a protocol.  It is not basic research, but tools to be applied in a specific application.

"A lot of people don’t see the bigger picture, and I certainly didn’t.  It was a big mistake I was making over and over.  It irritated Dr. Karger, I’m sure.   For example,  I found a way to circumvent peak broadening -- a way to couple two capillaries together.  I made isoelectric focusing in a 300 micron capillary.   I thought this was a big thing and I would be famous.. I wrote it up, and Dr. Karger basically said “so what?”.  I was totally unprepared for that, “So what?!” I exclaimed “It’s a world record!  It’s absolutely beautiful”.  But he has a perspective:  who is going to use it?  Because it’s useless if you don’t have the application for it.   How does it give a competitive advantage.

"Sometimes less is more, if it gives you a more useful application.  That’s more important than  beating an obscure world record.  It took me a long time, and coming from Europe where we were perfect in these small things,  these basic things, immensely proud of  “I can separate this from its twin”.  It was difficult to make this metamorphosis into applying this knowledge to really develop meaningful applications.  That was the biggest thing that I learned there.

"We have a friend come up and we say we’re doing this ovarian cancer thing and we’re looking at up-regulated and down-regulated genes and  this is very new for us.  Now I have a way to see how could I use what we have to do an really apply this for some thing."

RK: Do you get to work closely with the MD’s and people who have the medical knowledge – the bigger picture?

MM: " It is the power of application basically.  This is not next century’s chemistry or technology.  We do relatively simple things, of course we have some tricks and can do things that others cannot, but the point is we know how to use them and that’s why we have so many different collaborations.   We have 7 or 8 large projects directed at different diseases, not just cancer; we have 4 or 5 projects on cancer, but also cardiovascular disease, we have neuropsychotics, schizophrenia.  All because we can use the tools that we have.

"A second thing I learned at the Institute is a very general point that was very difficult for me: You have to be perfect if you present something.  This is obvious in publications, but simple monthly reports, even just emailing a procedure to someone, you can’t make mistakes.  I might say “mole” instead of  “molar”,  and most people wouldn’t care, its’ a small thing.  But you must not make these kinds of errors.

"If you make these little mistakes then people see you’re not careful.  And what people really like is that they can rely on you, and know that you’re always careful.  If you say “56 patients had this condition” they know it was 56, and not 65.  I used to make a lot of stupid mistakes like that.  And small things lead to big disasters.  This is what I always tell my people now."